Students raise turtles, then set them free

Seventh-grade Science Teacher Betty Johnson, left, and students from Bartlett Middle School watch as two diamondback terrapins head toward the marsh after being released Wednesday along the Rails to Trails near the Bull River Bridge. Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News

One of the released diamondback terrapins finds a student's shoe as it makes its way to the marsh after being released Wednesday along the Rails to Trails near the Bull River Bridge. Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News

Troy Brown, assistant principal at Bartlett Middle School, points out one of the diamondback terrapins to a student as the turtle makes its way through the marsh Wednesday. Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News

Scroll to the bottom or click here to watch as the diamondback terrapins are released into the marsh.

It's tough to be a turtle near Tybee Island, as the tale of four baby diamondback terrapins attests.

Bartlett Middle School students hand-reared the turtles this school year, feeding them fiddler crabs to sharpen their hunting skills and scrubbing their tanks to keep the turtles healthy. Because of that tender loving care, the barely 1-year-old turtles already are as big as wild 3-year-olds - about the size of a compact disc.

Endangered EmpireClick here to read more about the diamondback terrapin and other endangered Coastal Empire species.

That's big enough to fend for themselves without the risk of becoming instant bird food. So on Wednesday, their caretakers returned the fledgling turtles to the marsh.

Students Shane Williams, 14, and Jeremy Wilcher, 13, each placed a squirming terrapin on the rails-to-trails path near the Bull River as their classmates watched.

The terrapins moved deliberately - they are turtles, after all - toward the adjoining marsh. In 10 minutes, they were barely within sight amid the marsh grass.

Jordan Gray, an Armstrong Atlantic State University biology student and turtle researcher who organized the pilot program to hand-raise the turtles at Bartlett, said the terrapins were aiming for a tidal creek between the trail and U.S. 80.

It would serve as a good home.

"I've walked that creek, and there are tons of terrapins in it," he said.

The diamondback terrapins, a species of concern in Georgia, were hatched from eggs harvested from females killed while trying to cross U.S. 80 last spring and summer.

Gray began documenting such road kills there in 2005. He has seen a sharp decline in the number of turtles - both dead and alive - sighted in subsequent years.

In 2005, he spotted about 280 dead turtles and 20 live ones. Last year, those numbers had plummeted to 37 dead turtles and only a single live - but injured - terrapin.

That's an alarming trend, said Terry Norton, director of veterinary services for the Georgia Sea Turtle Center on Jekyll Island.

"Maybe they can't sustain that kind of mortality for the long term," he said.

Hand-raising and then releasing the offspring of deceased turtles helps compensate for the loss of those females.

Science teacher Todd Casey said the Bartlett turtles got a helping hand - and they gave one, too. The turtles got some students excited about school.

Seventh-grader Shane Williams was one such student. He had the honor of releasing a turtle because he took on the responsibility of feeding and caring for two of the terrapins.

"You could see a change in his attitude," Casey said. "It was a good social thing as well as being educational."

It was often Shane who remembered his charges when others forgot.

"If not for that kid, the turtles wouldn't have always gotten fed," Casey said.

The turtles, in turn, sparked an interest that the youngster didn't know he had.

"I didn't really like science until we started doing them," Shane said.

Loggerheads nesting nicely

After a month of nesting activity in Georgia, loggerhead sea turtles are on track for a possibly record-breaking nesting season.

In May, turtle researchers documented 203 nests on the state's beaches. Cumberland Island leads the nesting numbers with 43. Tybee did not record any nests in May. Based on May's activity, Mark Dodd, the Georgia sea turtle coordinator, estimates that 1,300 to 1,500 loggerhead nests are likely to be identified and recorded before the end of the summer. The highest total recorded in the last decade was 1,503 in 2003.